G7 favoured dirty energy during pandemic, allege NGOs

The G7 group of the world's wealthiest nations failed to invest enough in green energy during the pandemic, instead massively subsidising polluting industries, a group of NGOs said Wednesday.

The countries injected $189 billion (£133 billion) into fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal between January 2020 and March 2021, compared to $147 billion into clean forms of energy according to a report by Britain's Tearfund and Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Canada's International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

More than eight in every 10 dollars committed to dirty fossil fuels during the pandemic came with no requirement for environmental mitigation, the NGOs said in a statement.

In particular, government bailouts benefited airlines or airports threatened with bankruptcy due to the shock of the public health crisis.

The report highlights the gap between the UK government's green ambitions and the reality of spending ahead of the G7 summit that Britain will host next week.

Britain is the worst performer of the G7 in terms of subsidies for fossil fuels, even though its government has pledged to stop financing polluting projects abroad and ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.

The G7 -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States -- pledged in May to end government support for coal-fired power plants this year.

The seven nations have also said they will discuss ways to encourage a green recovery from the pandemic at the summit in the southwestern region of Cornwall.

"Choices made now by the G7 countries will either accelerate the transition towards a climate-safe future for all or jeopardise efforts to date to tackle the climate crisis," said Paul Cook, head of advocacy at Tearfund.

He added that the nations "rank among the most polluting countries in the world, representing only a tenth of the global population but almost a quarter of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions".

The NGOs point out that a number of non-G7 countries have significantly improved their environmental policies over the past year, including Australia, India, South Korea and South Africa.